Bank of America Corp. should pay the maximum penalty of $863 million for selling defective loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, given the egregiousness of the fraud, U.S. prosecutors told a federal judge, Bloomberg reported. Bank of America's Countrywide unit was found liable by a jury in Manhattan federal court last month for selling the government-sponsored entities thousands of defective loans in the first federal mortgage-fraud case to go to trial. The bank's fraud was "simple but brazen," prosecutors wrote in a court filing. "They made bad loans and they knowingly sold those bad loans as good loans to cheat Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac out of money."